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When we first launched The Design Files Open House in 2011, we never dreamt we might one day be building our own Open House location from scratch. Call us CRAZY, but this year, for the first time, Open House will be custom designed and built by our hardworking and talented team, within the footprint of rather large split-level warehouse in Collingwood, Melbourne. This means, for the first time, we get to design, select and customise EVERYTHING ourselves – from the layout of the space, to flooring choices and even kitchen appliances…!
WOAH. Deep breaths, people.
Some things, however, haven’t changed. The Design Files Open House still represents the ultimate ‘Australian home’ – a bustling, colourful space furnished with our favourite locally designed furniture, homewares and lighting, artwork by talented Australian artists, books by local authors and much more. As always, each and every item can be purchased on the spot! This year, we have invited over 30 brand new designers, artists and makers to participate, whose work has never been seen at Open House before. These include some incredibly talented recent discoveries, such as local ceramicists Jessilla Rogers and Sarah Schembri, and artists Madeline Kidd, Emma Lipscombe, Fred Fowler, and many more.
Today you can browse The Design Files Open House 2014 website to see which fabulous brands, designers and artists are involved in this year’s event! In the coming weeks, we will also upload a selection of product on the website, so you can see some of the original artwork and product we’ll have in store.
Events on this scale don’t happen without the incredible support of a bunch of likeminded partners and sponsors, who invest in our vision, and help us bring all our crazy ideas to life! We’re very selective about our sponsors – it’s imperative to work with brands who speak our language, and who trust us to do our thing. This year we’re thrilled to introduce Bank of Melbourne as our inaugural Major Event Partner. We are immensely grateful for their support, and we’re looking forward to co-hosting breakfast events with Bank of Melbourne for Small Business owners at Open House in early December.
We also have five wonderful Major Sponsors supporting The Design Files Open House 2014. Once again we have partnered with our pals at Jardan to bring the event to life. Jardan have been with us ever since our very first event in 2011 – we are so grateful for their ongoing support. Australia’s leading paint brand Dulux are also with us again this year, and we’ve selected a palette of stunning Dulux colours to feature throughout the house. For the first time this year we’re working with a new vehicle sponsor – we’re excited to welcome Fiat to the Open House family! We’ll be working with a local designer to customise a stylish Fiat500 especially for the event (more news on that soon!). For our flooring, we’re working with Melbourne based brand Royal Oak Floors, whose beautiful range of wide oak and herringbone floors will be seen throughout the house. AND last but not least, building Open House from scratch means designing and building a full scale KITCHEN ourselves (!), which we’re doing with the generous support of Siemens, whose sleek kitchen appliances will feature in the house.
HUGE THANKS to all our partners and sponsors for their generous support of this project. We absolutely couldn’t do it without them!
SO, dear readers. The next 2 months are going to get a little mad around here! We’ll be receiving and processing stock. We’ll be working on a few pretty RAD collaborations – Georgina Reid of The Planthunter and local planty peeps Charlie and Wona from Loose Leaf are joining forces to create a lush indoor garden for us, and I’m working with Robert Gordon Australia on a brand new and exclusive range of tableware and vessels especially for Open House (so excited!). We’ll be chatting to Seven Seeds about the coffee set up, and working with the amazing Cookes Food to dream up the yummiest catering for our opening night and media events. All Saints Estate will be delivering lovely local wines for our VIP events. We’ll be placing a big order with local label Habbot, who have generously offered to kit out our event staff in beautiful handcrafted leather shoes, and as always we’ll be working with The Project Agency to spread word of this year’s event far and wide!
But YOU guys have only ONE TASK ahead. Simply put a note in your diary and make sure you come visit us in the first weekend in December!
Thankyou ALL for your endless support of this project and everything else we dream up around here! We can’t wait to share another epic Open House event with you all – scarily soon!
The Design Files Open House
Thursday Dec 4th – Sunday Dec 7th 2014
Open 10.00am – 5.00pm daily
Collingwood, Melbourne
(Location to be announced soon!)
